Comparing Two Emergent Literacy Screeners: The Reading House and Star Early Literacy in a Florida Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK) Program

Authors

• Jaime D. Swenbeck, University of South AlabamaFollow

Files

Description

Emergent Literacy (EL) refers to the foundational skills that develop from birth through the preschool years and support later reading success (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008; Levy et al., 2006). These include basic Print Concepts, Phonological Awareness, Vocabulary, Letter-Sound Knowledge, and Emergent Writing (Piasta et al., 2021; Puranik et al., 2011). Because they serve as predictors for later literacy success, accurate identification of children struggling to learn EL skills is important. There are various types of tools, ranging from screening tools to diagnostic assessments, that measure children’s EL skills, with assessment times ranging from 10-15 minutes to 45-60 minutes. In a recently conducted project in the APLL Lab, a standardized, norm-referenced tool was used to measure 4-year-olds’ EL skills via Zoom before and after families’ participation in an 8-week, home-based parent education program that uses shared-book reading to support children’s early literacy skills. Although comprehensive, there were limitations to using the norm-referenced measure in the previous investigation (Henbest et al., in press). Pre- and post-assessments were administered using the Assessment of Literacy and Language (ALL; Lombardino et al., 2020), which took 45 minutes per administration and was conducted entirely on Zoom. This was not ideal for preschool-aged children. We needed a screening tool that would incorporate a naturalistic, shared-book experience while assessing children for risk of reading deficits. The Reading House (Hutton et al., 2019) evaluates multiple EL skills and serves as a shared-book screening tool, with administration time of ~10 minutes.

Publication Date

5-2026

Disciplines

Early Childhood Education | Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research | Educational Methods | Elementary Education | Language and Literacy Education

Recommended Citation

Swenbeck, Jaime D., "Comparing Two Emergent Literacy Screeners: The Reading House and Star Early Literacy in a Florida Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK) Program" (2026). Poster Presentations. 51.
https://jagworks.southalabama.edu/honors_college_posters/51